Thread: What are you doing on День Победы?

I'll be spending the Victory day in Gomel, Belarus. Every affordable hotel room in Minsk is booked, and I had trouble finding a flat to rent too. So I decided to stay in Gomel.

For me, this is a very interesting holiday that I have never experienced before.

The super sweet hotel receptionist translated the entire schedule of Gomel's official celebration schedule specifically for me, into English! Activities here are non-stop all day, starting with a parade at 10:00, concerts, performances and finishing late in the evening with fireworks!

How exciting!! I have never seen this type of thing before, live... And I really like some of the melodies associated with this day.

After that, I'll go to Minsk.

Is anyone else celebrating this day in a "traditional" way, or are you just having a day off? What happens in your city/town?


1 in 4 Belarussians DIED during WW2, according to my guide book. It's almost impossible to imagine such a scale.

День победы

I'm doing nothing. I advice you to watch the parade in Moscow. It will be tomorrow at ten o'clock. What do people in Sweden and the UK think of world war 2? What were you told at school?

Well, most likely I'll watch the Moscow parade at the morning and in the evening I'll go and watch fireworks in my town central square with my son as I do every year.

Originally Posted by Marcus

What do people in Sweden and the UK think of world war 2? What were you told at school?

The UK thinks that they (in particular) and the Americans (although they think the US entered too late) won WW2 and people are only vaguely aware that the USSR was involved at all.

In Sweden people think we were really smart to not be involved in the war at all thanks to "neutrality policy". Some say Sweden probably would have been invaded, and would have been relatively chanceless if we had not provided Germany with all the iron, steel and other natural resources that they wanted (just continuing existing business relations).

In school, I was taught about the efforts of both on the Western and Eastern fronts. The picture of the Soviet flag on the Reichstag house was at the cover of one of my history books. So I was surprised when I moved to England (where the war memorial day is in November). They talk as if they singlehandedly won the war and any mentioning of the USSR is very negative.

I must say I am/was not very interested in WW2 and did not pay much attention and can't remember much of what I was taught - but I definitely remember about Soviet partisans, and specifically a lot about the siege of Leningrad - and Stalingrad, of course. A retired man who had lived in Leningrad during the siege, came to my school and talked about it.

Unfortunately the USSR mistakenly (it seems) captured a Swedish diplomat who was a hero (he saved thousands of Jews in Budapest). They thought he was a German spy, took him to Moscow and shot him. There were lots of conspiracy theories that he was still alive though. His name was Raoul Wallenberg. His fate cast a bit of a shadow over our view of the USSRs role in the war.

Also, some people had family connections with Estonia and Latvia and felt that USSR was wrong to annex them - they lost property etc. Our current foreign minister for example. Quite a lot of Estonians moved to Sweden after the war. Some of them were native Swedish speakers, others not.

Hollywood films also show a rather one-sided view of who fought in WW2.... Although we had Russian films on TV sometimes when I grew up, there were never any about the war that I can recall. I had not seen any Russian WW2 films until after I joined this forum and got some good titles.

I stayed up all night listening to the old Soviet patriotic songs played on Voice of Russia. Of course I can listen to these songs online anytime, but I still wanted to hear them from a Russian radio on the Victory Day. They didn’t play the few songs that I’ve learned, but I will know a lot more by this time next year!